"Did you notice today? How the clouds cleared right before the end of the day, and the sun peaked out just in time to make its closing bows? Something about it made me think that it was the last sunset I'd ever see."
He lies awake, his evening asleep beside him, a dozen drinks from the stranger that she is. Morning will come soon and there's no sleep to be found. It's the silence that gnaws, a stillness that's palpable. He thinks, there should be something here, some more inside. There once was a thrill of finding something new, something real, but these days they are all shadows of love. I never wanted this, he thinks, I just wanted something simple, something right. And that always brings him back to the day he lost his way.
"Sometimes I wonder what you and I would each be like if we had never met. I think you'd have found someone else. You'd probably be married and happy now. And I ... I'd still be searching ... still be searching for me."
He remembers the first time he noticed her and the first time she noticed him. There was so much promise in those days, so much youth to be spent. They were wild years, when possibility meant more than certainty and he wasn't sure of much at all. But expectation grows with each cycle of the sun. And then he wonders, what more could I have done? Didn't I give enough? Could I have given some more? He wonders what it'd be like to be the other guy. The one she loved and left him for.
"I'm sorry, I never meant for it to turn out like this. I wish there was some reason I could give but I don't understand it myself. I'm sorry, you've been so good and I've been so unfair, I hoped I could change. I'm sorry."
The words are a bitterness in his mouth, something he just can't get rid of. He turns them over and upside down, to find some wisdom, even though it's been years now, and there's the same old emptiness. He's looking for something to put the beast to rest. He turns over and looks at the stranger beside him and wonders if this is just a test. It's too early to say but maybe this is the one that will make him whole again. But he just can't help feeling that it'll be just another heart to break.
"After all that's past, it's a wonder you treat me so nice."
He hides behind his ambiguous smile all the words he dare not say. How could he, tensioned between hopes and regrets, bring the moment to its crisis. To say that it was a narrow miss, that two such as they and so meant to be, are not in this strange twist of reality. And that in some other universe they were as one – another life like a whisper of tears held in the thimble around her neck. And that in some alternate ending they went into the sunset hand in hand and somewhere out there there's one such as he, who loves a she such as her and so much that it spills over through the infinite distances between what might have been and what they have. What would it mean and what good would it do to say such things.
"You know, I can't read you anymore."
He plays the remark off with a laugh. Thinking, oh how wrong you are. You read me so well. If only you'd believe what you see, you know the truth. But it hurts so much, he knows that well. There's a distance we'll never bridge, a realization we'll never get past. I feel it when you ask, and I feel it when you don't. When it's like this, nothing more to win and nothing left to lose, tell me what to do. It's more important than ever, please tell me what to do.
"Thank you."
He wonders if there ever is an appropriate response to these words. "You're welcome," seems so condescending and "No, thank you," too confrontational. Instead he tries to say it with his eyes. Can you read me now? Can you see that it's this simple paradox: I'll never move past you, but because of you I can go on. Because of you there is an always, always fullness in my life. I exist in constant orbit of your gravity, but if I fell into the well I'd be motionless. And I must move on. And he does, let go, and walks away.
It's three drinks into the night and a familiar song with a new beat is spinning. She drags her friends onto the floor and lets the music flow. Closing her eyes she feels the casual contact she so desperately craves. Oh why can't it always be like this? Bathe underneath the cascade of colored lights and dream of the heat and sensual nights. She remembers thinking it would be easy to find a place in this world. But reasons for living, never come cheap. Instead she fights the realities of dawn with another round, another bar and thinks of another town.
dreams of sights, of sleigh rides in seasonsShe's half way home in a yellow taxi coach that smells like a pumpkin but her shoes aren't made of glass. A run-away trying to find her way home, she knows she can't come back empty handed, with only stories about the city and these stolen moments. Remembers thinking she'd be the one with all the answers instead of all the questions, and that there should have been warmth in the winter instead of a chill in the spring. And that's why she came this way, lead by thoughts of a beautiful fall.
just lying smiling in the darkThrough heavy lidded eyes, she struggles up the stairs, thinks of the choices she's made and the good that it's done. In her head she says, It seems so short a distance, it seems so long a road, from what I once held and what I now hold. There's a voice from an earlier time, reminding her that there's a somewhere to belong. And then finally, happy for a moment now, tumbles off to sleep.
look at me with starry eyes"So this is my idea for a story..."
You're such a dreamer, she thinks seeing the boy behind the man, there's a fountain of youth in there somewhere hidden inside and an endless stream of words with which to carve the beautiful canyons in my bedrock. She wants to capture those always moving hands and feel the vibrancy of his thoughts deep inside. You speak to my heart with the most ordinary words, she muses and wonders where she'll ever find another quite like this.
"It's a love story, like most stories, but that's not the important part..."
But it is, don't you see? It is to me. Sometimes I wish you'd tell me that love is all that is and all I need. She tries to pull it from his eyes, from the soft curve of his lips, but these wisps of dreams just won't coalesce into certainty and she has to shake herself from this reverie. Why, after all these years, do I still have a school girl's crush? She swirls the vintage of it in her mouth and tastes the lingering sweetness. It makes her giddy in the head and she laughs and smiles at almost nothing at all.
"If I only had the time..."
Oh, if we had time. It wouldn't have come to this. If we had time ... but time had us and we have to do the best with it that we can. He teases her with these wild ideas, with traces of beauty that she remembers long after. She wishes he would just put it all down, give something she could feel and keep, something that would last longer than these once in a while evenings.
Life, the Universe, and Everything
"It's wrong." Someone from the back offered.
"Really?" The instructor took a look at the equation and replied, "No. It's right."
"Um... It's definitely wrong."
"No. I'm sure it's right" We sat there with this irreconcilable difference between us stretching ten seconds into an uncomfortable minute. Then he broke the deadlock, "How long am I going to have to wait, until one of you asks me to explain what I'm saying?"
He had written this on the board: 342-173=147
I think I made it through my four years at Berkeley without asking a question. For the most part, at least when I managed to stay awake, I understood what my professors were saying. And if I didn't, I was sure I would be able to figure it out from the textbook. Four years and I never bothered to raise my hand or venture into office hours. Why should I? I managed decent enough grades after all. And yet, a college education hadn't prepared me to solve this simple math problem.
"It's in base 8."
I had always thought of myself to be possessed with a insatiable desire to learn. Ever since I was in grade school I was at the top of my class or even in the next grade. Even when I made the transition to higher education I manged to stay a step ahead of my peers. I tutored through most of those years and I figured if I was good at anything, I was good at learning.
"How many of you thought I was crazy?" He continued. "How many of you had already decided that I had no idea what I was talking about? You must be good at asking questions..."
Going to school to learn is like racing a bike with training wheels. In school they package the truth in such a way that not only is it often not true, it's not even discovery, instead it's memorization. In the real world no one's there to offer you information and when they do, you are left to wonder if it's really fact. I am fond of saying that one of the many ironies of higher education is that a the more prestigious institutions, the professors you get are often better researchers than teachers. In truth this is probably a good thing, because the more challenging it is to understand, the more questions you have to ask, the better you'll be at learning.